I think I'm a part of the first generation of journalists to skip print media entirely, and I've learned a lot these last few years at Forbes. My work has appeared on TVOvermind, IGN, and most importantly, a segment on The Colbert Report at one point. Feel free to follow me on Twitter or on Facebook, write me on Facebook or just email at paultassi(at)gmail(dot)com. I'm also almost finished with my sci-fi novel series, The Earthborn Trilogy.

Steve Jobs and Apple's Influence on Gaming Massively Overstated

I didn’t think all the hero worship of Steve Jobs over the past few weeks would end up invading my little video gaming corner of the world here, but I can’t let this go without a comment.

A questionnaire was sent out to the attendees of the London Games Conference earlier this week which asked what the biggest influences on video games have been since the medium’s inception. The 1,000 people surveyed are supposed to be avid fans and industry professionals, but they should all have their consoles and computers taken away after giving answers like these.

Ridiculousness, plain and simple. Sure, Steve Jobs was a great tech pioneer, but giving him credit for shaping the VIDEO GAME industry more than any other figure? Are you kidding ? Though the iPhone debuted some very popular casual titles like Angry Birds and Cut the Rope, they hardly invented the cell phone game, and to say that ANY mobile game is more relevant to the industry than years of console and PC titles is absolute insanity.

Then to give Jobs the top honors over Gabe Newell (of Valve) and Shigeru Miyamoto (of Nintendo) is blasphemy, plain and simple. Gaming was never Jobs’ primary focus, as Macs can barely play most PC games, and only recently has the iPhone made waves in the casual games market.

I’m all for giving Jobs credit where he’s due, but treating him like some sort of god who invented anything with an on switch is offensive to those who actually made significant contributions in other areas of technology, and it needs to stop.

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You’re righteous rage is a bit over the top. Apple has reshaped consumer electronics, plain and simple. Gaming was not a direct target, but it has been affected in significant ways. It’s undeniable.

It’s also undeniable that most people simply don’t know most people on that list. In popularity polls, name recognition rules.

Rather than rant against Jobs, which simply makes you look petty, I’d suggest writing a column about who you think are the most influential people and why. Educate us instead of merely venting your spleen.

There is some truth to that. The article should probably contain citations, e.g. “Shigeru Miyamoto deserved much more attention because…” But you also have to realize this poll was “supposed to be avid fans and industry professionals.” A true “gaming industry professional” and “avid fan” alike BOTH know the name Shigeru Miyamoto. It’s impossible not to know Super Mario Bros., and that it was one of the greatest selling video games of all time at a whopping 40 million units. In fact, the one reported to sell more was Wii Sports at 76 million. So twice now Nintendo actually is king of sales. But really, the professionals and avid fans should know better, and shame on them for thinking that the passed couple years of dollar menu gaming have actually made that much of an impact on the medium of video gaming itself.

Actually, you’re a little off on the “king of sales” part. In just over 2 years of sales, Angry Birds is the top selling game of all time with over 500 million. All 16 games in the Mario franchise, in over 2 decades of sales, have sold around 240 million combined. I’m not saying I agree with Jobs or the iPhone being placed where they are on those lists, but with numbers like that I can surely understand why.

As for your comment “Gaming was never, ever Jobs’ primary focus, as Macs could barely play most PC games,” This statement clearly shows your ignorance of the history of the computer industry. In the 1980’s all computer games came out for Apple first and then if ever made their way to the PC. This changed after Steve Jobs left Apple and some CEOs made bad decisions about killing off games to prove they were business machines. You probably are also unaware that the much hyped and highly anticipated game Halo was created for the Macintosh first. Microsoft panicked when the saw it and bough the developer out to have prevent it from being delivered and to use it to promote the Xbox.

You kind of duplicated your post, so I’ll duplicate my call-out — you’re missing the Commodore 64, a major contender in computer gaming. Yes, the IBM PC was very weak in the early days of computer gaming, but that had more to do with the fact that the IBM was designed as a business machine, not a “fun” machine, so you have to be fair. Just like an original Sega Genesis/Megadrive would make a terrible general use computer, but it was an excellent gaming machine in its heyday. Different devices optimized for different things.

Your slightly wrong about Microsoft and halo. Bungie ran into financial problems and it was them who contacted Microsoft, this was around two years before the launch of xbox, Microsoft saw the potential and the rest is history.

I think your assertion is far off base. Steve Jobs iDevices has had a major impact on the gaming industry and has changed the pricing dynamics of the industry. Nintendo was the former king of mobile gaming and now they are desperately seeking a way to reinvent themselves or they will not exist much longer. As for your comment “Gaming was never, ever Jobs’ primary focus, as Macs could barely play most PC games,” This statement clearly shows your ignorance of the history of the computer industry. In the 1980’s all computer games came out for Apple first and then if ever made their way to the PC. This changed after Steve Jobs left Apple and some CEOs made bad decisions about killing off games to prove they were business machines. You probably are also unaware that the much hyped and highly anticipated game Halo was created for the Macintosh first. Microsoft panicked when the saw it and bough the developer out to have prevent it from being delivered and to use it to promote the Xbox.

There were a LOT of computers in the 80s capable of games. I would argue that the Commodore 64 was a greatly popular platform that you’re totally discounting. Jobs has had a major impact on the immediate history of gaming industry in introducing a line of cheap and quick games, but you’re completely ignoring that the games we play now are on the shoulders of pioneers that worked on limited hardware many years ago to create utter magic. Jobs is not the greatest creator since the inception of video games, only the creator of the mobile phone marketplace.

didnt Apple have a massively failed game console of their own in the 90′s called Pippin? My first computer was a zx spectrum in the 80′s, it was the first affordable home computer in the UK and was a huge success for a while, I don’t know if the game creators made games for the MAC but a lot of them became millionaires thanks to the spectrum and commodor, they were the new type of rock gods back then and without doubt influenced thousands of kids to start programming,

#1: Games did not go to apple 1st. They went to the Commodore and then the Atari slaughtered everyone. Or are you arguing that Apple was more popular than Atari? Dont make me smack you.

#2: Apple didnt lose games because of management. They lost games because they lost market share and when they lost market share people stopped producing for them.

#3: Apple shareholder FIRED Jobs because he was DIRECTLY RESPONSIBLE for them almost going out of business. He and Gates had a falling out over philosophy and Gates steamrolled him. Jobs however remained stubborn and oversaw billions in losses for several years before he was fired. If he had stayed, Apple might not even exist today.

And before you go off proclaiming Jobs the ultimate winner based on current market value…

#4: Jobs got his CEO position back BECAUSE OF HIS FRIEND MR. GATES. Without Gates’ support, he would have never been let back in.

And a little more history….

#5: The brain storm that took place to create an all-in-one pc was done with the help of none other than… BILL GATES. The machine would later be known as the iMAC of which all other “i” personal products came to follow. Jobs was not the sole creator.

Jobs will always be remembered for popularizing the cheap home PC at a time when IBM was selling $15,000 computers (no he was not the 1st to do it but he was the 1st to achieve mass production and nationwide sales).

this is an old post but i can’t help it, pointing out recreationist history by Apple fanatics is something that frankly needs to be done because its gotten way out of hand

@mattack actually no, YOU don’t know what you’re talking about.

yes it was the Board of Directors that got rid of him. but it was merely the official company line that Jobs resigned, after the board removed ALL of his power. “resigning” was just a formality of forcing him out of the company, a pretty common event in the business world.

he was fired. and that’s not just “how people term it nowadays”.

unless this group of casual ignorant “people” you are so dismissive of includes this guy = “I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been FIRED from Apple. It was awful-tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it.” (accent added to make it clear)

know who said that? just a little nobody who would know nothing about the situation named Steve Jobs.

Your rant has some relevance. Jobs’ contribution surely was making available a product upon which quick and easy to use games coud be played. It was more a realization by game developers than a product design intent thing. Games for those waiting in line, stuck at airports, lounging at home are the winners here. Yet you can, most amazingly, play DeadSpace on an iPhone!

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, you need to take into account the scope of the question: “the biggest influences on video games have been since the medium’s inception.” Jobs is not this. Miyamoto’s creations popularized what most video games even were (i.e. the “platformer” with blocks and power-ups etc.) for 15+ years until 3D games appeared. FIFTEEN YEARS over the relatively minuscule run of mobile games. These are just games presented in a new form that previously didn’t exist and admittedly is a huge market, but it’s not that influential to the medium itself.

Your basic premise is fair, Steve Jobs should not be in the top 3, but you writing is more of a rant than journalism. Also in 10 years as mobile gaming eclipses consoles, Steve may well deserve a top 3 spot. My favorite game of all time was ‘Load Runner’ that I played on my Apple IIe back in 1983.

Paul, what you don’t understand is that the 99c or free game model, Apple’s App Store, the 250 million iPhones, iPod touches and iPads out there and the watershed Multi-touch interface that all draws in casual gamers by the hundreds of million IS the most influential change to happen to the gaming industry in decades.

Apple’s App Store and 99c game model destroys the $40 game title and loss-leader hardware model of the Xbox and PS and the dedicated retail gaming store.

The enormous allure of Apple’s hardware and frictionless software purchase model is an enormous honeypot drawing in massive numbers of casual gamers and destroying Ninetendo’s profits as the same casual demographic that might have bought a Wii instead just buy billions of game apps for their iPhone, iPod or iPad.

Angry Birds is just the tip of the 100 million gaming app iceberg that so completely dwarfs Snake and other titles on what used to pass as mobile gaming that it is almost laughable to say there was a mobile gaming market before iOS.

The funny thing is that Apple never set out to reshape the gaming industry – it just happened coming out of the confluence of the iOS software and hardware ecosystem just getting it all oh so right and has shaken the industry to its roots.

Steve Jobs is the Accidental hero in gaming and quite rightly stands in the minds of these thousand game fans and industry professionals as the biggest influence on the gaming industry as a whole for decades.

All Jobs has done is created a new market for quick and cheap video games. That’s a marketing gimmick that spawned a “dollar menu.” But to say he’s the largest influence in the last 30 years of video gaming is ridiculous. I will admit that this has created a new venue of quick time-waster games, but those existed before the Apple products. The games that are appearing on mobile devices are all children of video game concepts developed by many other people many years before.

I disagree. We have seen this trend before. Back in the late 70s we had something called an Atari which drew millions and millions of casual gamers. Then we had handhelds which sold fantastically and just a few years ago, we had the Wii which drew hundreds of millions of casual gamers.

Also note, that these casual gamers were already playing similar games on their PC at work and school. They simply werent being accounted for because there was no easy to way to count them.

Also, I dont think anyone (with an above 140 IQ) can argue that the Droid will steamroll the iPhone in time. Luckily for the iPhone, games will be cross-compatible if they are flash based but I wouldnt hold my breath if Droid makers want to somehow capitalize and do something about it.

Steve Jobs didn’t even want third party apps on the iPhone when he started, he had to be convinced by people who knew better inside Apple, namely Art Levinson and Phil Schiller. So if you think that gaming on a smartphone is a great innovation (though it existed before the iPhone, so they didn’t invent it), then you should name Art Levinson instead of Steve Jobs.

There is a tendency in Apple fans to think that Steve Jobs was the originator of everything at Apple. It is so not true.

Steve Jobs was no technological genius, he was someone who provided a vision for the company and who could read the market well, and his own lack of technical skill made him force the real technological brains behind Apple to make products that were very accessible and user-friendly. He also was great at marketing and selling a product. But every product that made Apple what it is today is the baby of other people. The first computers were designed by Steve Wozniak, the first real technological brain behind Apple, who was ejected from the company by Steve Jobs later on. Apple’s design is created by Jonathan Ive, not Steve Jobs.

This is different from Bill Gates who wrote much of the basis of the first Windows OS and who personally reviewed the codes made by his programmers for years.

Calling Steve Jobs the most influent man on gaming is not only exaggerated, but quite insulting to the myriad of people who had much more influence on gaming than him.

Sure Bushnell was influential back then, but we are talking the present day and Apple is having a far greater impact on the industry in the here and now with the ecosystem, policies and business model instituted by Steve Jobs.

No we’re not talking about the present day. Read the question: “the biggest influences on video games have been since **the medium’s inception**” This mobile stuff is only starting. Nintendo brought video games back from the brink after Atari ruined it and the toy companies assumed video games were a fad whose time had come to pass. Nintendo is also pretty much responsible for what we now know as a “platformer.”

Some small time games on a phone is hardly industry changing, its far more appropriate to say the company created a new gaming market which has resulted in some very successful games but I fail to see how this changed the pc and console industry.

Summary of my feelings: First of all, we all need to stop praising the glory of Jobs. Jobs was an excellent CEO and salesman of his own goods, but he wasn’t really all that great a human in terms of human works (e.g. Bill Gates.) Stop wearing Jobs glasses and turtlenecks people.

A survey of supposedly 1000 people working in the video game industry think that the Apple products and Jobs himself are the most influential things to video games ever. First of all, Atari created the major US video game market, and subsequently destroyed it. Nintendo “rescued” it with the NES and Super Mario Bros. is the second most selling video game of all time at 40 million units. More importantly, it popularized pretty much all the concepts of what we now call a “platformer”, which continued to run the market for the next 15+ years until the 3D games started to show up. So I can’t see how Shigeru Miyamoto didn’t rate CONSIDERABLY higher.

All that Jobs has succeeded in doing is bringing about a new presentation of an existing medium, and created a “dollar menu” of quick and cheap games. He may have created an entirely new market, I’ll give him that, but influential to video games at large? Hardly! Sonic the Hedgehog and Mario are still to this day persisting icons of the video game legacy. Angry Birds is just today’s fad. There’s a serious difference there. What’s popular today does not qualify as most important thing ever.

And finally, in terms of hardware, Apple computers were more popular than IBM PCs back in the 80s, because PCs were focusing on being business machines, not fun machines. But people forget there were other qualifying contenders like Commodore 64 that were popularizing computer gaming with hardware optimized for the task.

A. Steve Jobs himself never created a video game system. In fact his iOS model is inhibitory to game development by not being open source. Developers have to pay to create iOS games. And I dont think i need to state the obvious about Macs as gaming computers.

B. Lets take into account the ability of the iPod touch/ Iphone as a gaming device. I personally only play games on a device of this nature when there is no console or PC available, as the controls are crap, and the games are mediocre. Do these people think that angry birds can stand up to the likes of Halo, Battlefield and COD. Even if you say it brings gaming to the common man, WII does that far better with its wiimote as a controller that is easy for the non-gamer to use

C. I find this award to be martyr BS. Any real gamer A would never rate the iOS as his favorite platform

D. Thank you for writing this article, cause everyone was thinking the same thing.

Just a thought… maybe they didn’t even know who these people *were*, so they picked Jobs by default. A lot of them probably do many game reviews but when it comes to the people behind the show who actually do the work, may know nothing.

Firstly, I have to say that I’m getting tired of the Jobs worship. Since his passing all the Mac fanboys have done nothing but try to turn this man into a saint and portray his as the father of the modern world.

I’ll give Jobs his credit, he did have his moments, but to try and give him credit for every single technological advancement whether he was involved or watching on the sidelines is ludicrous.

Steve Jobs was influential as far as mobile, handheld phone/portable device gaming is concerned. Any real gamer will own a 3DS, DSi or PSP rather than an iPhone/iPad/iPod. Anyone who plays “app” games on their phone and professes to be a gamer, yet couldn’t play a PC or console title to save their lives is delusional.

Jobs and Apple have no business anywhere near gaming industry recognition as far as REAL gaming goes. If it were about casual mobile phone gaming, then sure, he and his devices are the cat’s ass.

To even list him with Miyamoto and Newell is blasphemy let alone give him top spot.

Steve Jobs was a good man, not a great man, he had his moments and did give the technology and mobile industry a huge boost, but gaming? Give me a break.

This is one of the extremely rare articles where Steve Jobs wasn’t elevated to the position of God. Jobs should be given credit no doubt for the immense work that he has done in the field of technology, but giving him credit for what he’s not done is absolutely ridiculous. Video game was never his forte and there are people who were the pioneers of video games. But unfortunately people have made it a habit of praising Jobs for things he was not associated with. Tomorrow they’ll give him credit for inventing a GPS too.

The only thing I will give credit to jobs for is that he helped change the mobile phone industry and the mp3 marketplace. I won’t recognize that he change the world of computing or gaming because he didn’t. Nor did he change the world, save the world or even create the world.

Wow, thank you for that. That was really news worthy. I think I’ll look into becoming a news correspondent.

It obviously doesn’t take much to be one. Perhaps Forbes would even consider giving you some competition, the employment market what it is and all.

Your post exposes a lack of knowledge and commitment to your chosen category. Perhaps you should do some more homework.

We don’t come to Forbes for your childish rants. Perhaps a much better article would have been to investigate why the majority believed Jobs was such an influence, talk to some of the conference attendees, even bring in the numbers of what the iPhone may have done for the gaming community. Actually, I’d like to read that article. Please get started on that right away.

This is exactly the fanaticism, I’ve been talking about and I’m so glad someone didn’t just choose to stand by while these iDiots made a mockery of “Hardcore Gamer’s” connection to REALITY on this matter!

When he died, I thought “Thank God” he and his rabid fans are finally FREE….. at last. From thinking he was some kind of gOd himself and definitely not up to the Real Greats in history!

Then…. when I read this news about this ridiculous survey, I about vomited. If anything Steve Jobs may be the father of RDF and he has no doubt advanced the arts of Gypsy Chicanery and Infomercial Marketing, but all the innovative ideas were stolen from others. Including those from the Woz and Jonny Ives!

I thought real Hard Core Gamers would be like bloodhounds drawn to the search for a dead body and we’d find out how powerful they all really are. But we all got fooled by a charlatan who openly admitted that he had “shamelessly stolen” ideas from others.

Equal to Thomas Edison….. WTF!?!?? Now supposedly in these iDiots mind’s that took this survey, he’s greater than Ken Kutaragi, Gabe Newell, Miyamoto, Hideo Kojima, Kazunori Yamauchi and talk about one man pulling a company back from the brink of death and bankruptcy, how about Hironobu Sakaguchi with his “Final Fantasy”? These and many others have meant more to gaming than either Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg (worse choice than Steve Jobs even)!

But then I realized this was just a well timed and orchestrated attempt by Steve Jobs’s brainwashed zombies to use his last bit of RDF and FUD generated Orwellian “Doublethink” propaganda for the Chairman over the World’s Party and it’s Proles!

It’s “Canned”, “Fixed” and the greatest tyrannical heist of history’s greatest everrrrrrzzzzz! ….now we know these iCrAppleholics won’t rest until they can claim Steve Jobs has risen from the dead and revealed that he…. not Sakaguchi created the real “Final Fantasy” game……. iGOD! The End Times are truly upon us and we now know who the “False Messiah” really is! ;-P

Your indignation over Steve Jobs being given so much credit is probably justified, although you should recall that, with its very early use of color graphics, the Apple ][ was a natural choice for game development. I also recall the games made for the early Macintosh as having amazingly smooth animation and detail, thanks to its high resolution screen and powerful processor.

I see this more in the context of the incredible fact that IOS devices are now the highest selling game platform (who could have seen that coming when the iPod was introduced?) Given that game makers write games for the biggest platforms preferentially, Jobs has the biggest current influence whether you like it or not.

Highest selling game platform? WTF drugs are you on? It’s a smartphone and barely that. It’s music player that can’t play MP3′s natively. It a crippled smartphone OS running on a tablet PC and not even the first at that!

For your information Angry Birds on Android has now topped the downloaded numbers of that on iOS. In fact more apps are now downloaded on the Android Platform than Apple’s iOS. Over 50% of new Smartphone sales are Android. In just the last 3 yearly quarters, Android Tablets have taken over 40% market share of that was 97% after a year on market in the 1st quarter. If that doesn’t wake you up to reality….. nothing will!

The World thought it crazy that the Jonestown kool-aid cult so mindlessly followed their lunatic leader James Jones into committing suicide. More than anything you iCrAppleholic iDiots are the greatest Cult Threat to the survival of the human race. Moronic Zombies who now Worship a non-entity corporation co-founder as close to a some supreme being over all life forms on earth!

I do know one thing…… it’s far too late to tell you iDiots to NOT DRINK THE KOOL-AIDE NOW!!! ….I’m just hoping it was all laced with cyanide to kill this Jobsonian Cult once and for all!

Worldwide sales figures Wii – 89.36 million as of 30 September 2011 PlayStation 3 – 56 million as of 2 November 2011 Xbox 360 – 55 million as of 4 June 2011

Apple has sold more game devices than console vendors combined – more than 250 million. That’s devices sold, not merely shipped (a touchy subject for Android tablet makers). Meanwhile, Google says that about 190 million Android phones have been sold (all numbers from Wikipedia).

So, you’re right that Android phones have outsold iPhones, but not IOS devices.

What do you consider a “game device”, because iOS devices are not game devices. The primary function of an iPad is not the slaying of zombie hoardes and when was the last time you tried to quickscope of your iPhone?

You are king of the morons if you believe your own iDiotic twisted (iFUD Doublethink) facts as the whole truth. Since when is a phone a games console YOU iDIOT!!!

Unlike a desktop PC these are all closed box systems, dedicated to a particular purpose. That of being primarily phones, game consoles or tablets. So which is it, because you can’t have it both ways. Is iPhone a “Game Console” (portable of course) or is it a phone? And buddy why are you trying to tread water up in thin air? Don’t you realize that by pitting all Apple iOS devices ever sold against one model of one brand’s gaming console is not Apples to Oranges? If you do that, you must include all game consoles ever sold by Sony, Nintendo, etc. Since you are saying all iOS devices are Game Consoles.

Your logic just spat in your own face, buddy. Pure Doublethink Marketing at it’s finest for iFanboys. Because both Nintendo and Sony have sold far more game consoles than Apple in their history. Even if…… you persist in ignorantly calling Apple’s phones and music players game consoles, they lose.

Sony alone has sold over 300 Million devices and that’s half of what Nintendo has sold. But BIG difference is all in the Billions of revenue from games content that they made. Remember they work on the opposite principle of Apple: Sell Devices at or below cost and make the money off creating and selling content. Apple sells their devices marked up 200% over their cost of parts and that’s where they make their Money. Gaming Industry spends $100 Million to develop one game and sell 20 Million at $60 to a $150. So even if they only averaged $60, that’s $1.2 Billion Dollars name any single piece of software on iPhone that’s made even a $100 Million Dollars?

Apple makes very little from content, because they don’t create it in the first place. Sony runs their own store and has their own Award Winning game development teams for Exclusive Game Content. Does Apple have A N Y? lol… NOT! Apple can NOT compete in the content provision category against the high end gaming experience of REAL GAME CONSOLES. Let’s take one premium game as an example. Gran Turismo is the #1 Seller by Revenue w/ over $10 Billion Dollars. Name one single App or game series that has grossed $1 Billion or even $100 Million in gross revenues? NONE!!!

If you want to call an iPod or iPhone or any smartphone a game console, name one exclusive or even just one game that has grossed even a fraction of the game sales of a single game on Nintendo Wii or Xbox 360 or PS3! …….and Pin the Tail on the iZombie or Angry Birds don’t count in the Professional Games Category.

We’re talking big boy game FRANCHISES that NO other device (gaming or otherwise) can provide, when we say Game Console! …..this Casual Gaming comparison to Pro stuff is like pitting your local YMCA football team to the Super Bowl Champions! lol…..

Nobody in their right mind is going to call any phone a game console, just because you can play games on it. I can make voice or video calls on both my PS3 and PSP. Does that mean I should call them Smartphones? lol….. climb into your microwave, get De-radiated. Maybe it can Zap your CrApple Crippled RDF and iFUD soaked brain into perceiving a semblance of REALITY!!!

He has a right to his own opinion. Just because you happen to be a confirmed iCrAppleholic munching on every pro Apple word, story, imagined or not, isn’t what he’s presenting here. Truth and being honest is his goal obviously. But accusing him of “Nerdbaiting” is preposterous. Especially since the only reason you’re saying anything is in defense of your beloved CrApple. So then condemning anything contrary to your obsessive view you perceive in Paul’s views is just your Apple Orwellian “Doublethink” iFUD leaking out!

Merely working on the same site, you don’t seem to treat Paul’s views with the same respect you expect to be treated in yourself. Especially since he’s younger maybe and actually…. if anything more closely represents a true gamer interest.

So you call it what??? lol…… Nerdbaiting! haha…. then that just confirms YOU are the biggest Nerd here. Because he reeled you right in hook, line and sinker, if that’s what his goal really was!

I’ll defend any writer’s right to print something controversial against a corporate entity that notoriously refrains from releasing or stating the truth in matters themselves. Apple hides everything they do inside from both the public and consumer’s scrutiny and sit silent in cases like this when they know dam well how much Steve gamers in general. Even though in this case, it’s supposedly instigated by a 3rd party (London Games Convention) with all “Canned Answers” are from a so called bunch of experts in gaming community. What a Crock…. if I was one of them I’d be hiding my head in the sand over being clearly manipulated into giving answers to questions, with somebody’s hidden agenda at the heart of the matter!

It’s OBVIOUS that this so called “Survey” was canned to get certain answers and by including Apple and Steve, as a choice in a predominantly console driven gaming World, that not only charges more than for any games in App Store, but represents a full 80% of profits in the entire Gaming Industry!

It can only be split up in ways. Hardcore Gamers and casual gamers that only play games when their board or games that don’t require any real gaming skill to play in the first place!

To include Steve Jobs and Apple as a choice in such a survey as this, is therefore the REAL NERD Baiting! …..especially preying on the sympathy voters in this case. Since the dude just kicked the bucket is so egregiously obvious!!!

I consider myself a gamer, and people also consider me one. I have been playing videogames since I was 6 years old. I consider it a blasphemy to even consider Jobs as someone that has shaped gaming. His company invented a device that uses touch screen in a really user friendly way. The device happens to play movies, music and games. How is that shaping videogames? Why dont we consider then Mark Zuckerberg with all those games for Facebook? This list is plain stupid. Everyone is riding on Steve Job`s death momentum to make him a hero on every field (Rest in Peace Steve). Please, credit where credit is due people. Hiroshi Yamauchi, Shigeru Miyamoto and Nintendo System shaped the industry that we are living right now. Playstation evolved it. Xbox Live continued that evolution. Nintendo Wii, was in the way of reshaping it again. However, it felt short because of lack of third party support and technical specs. The Iphone is nowhere to be found.

I am from Ecuador. I would to have seen Steve Job`s fans during Steve Wozniak`s speech. I loved when Wozniack said HE invented Mac`s first product. He also said that Steve Jobs was a great sales man. They complemented each other.

On one hand, I think SJ’s role in gaming is a bit overstated compared to Miyamoto BUT on the other hand, there are some things that have been forgotten. While the NES is obviously brilliant, the Apple II conveyed that anyone could program this thing through software and its friendly hardware – launching how many programmers and gaming companies? While it was crude and the graphics were low end, it was dazzling then and color! Then the Mac, while priced too high for the general mass market, it’s dazzling graphics inspired a generation of gamer-programmers with crisp graphics and processing power. While games such as Dark Castle, Myst and 7th Guest were more cult hits, for gamer programmers, they opened a world of what was possible. AND because macs had built in networking (AppleTalk), unlike PC’s requiring a network card purchase years later – the first games were crude but you could play LAN games. The name escpaes me but it was clearly the precursor to Doom and every network RPG … there were a handful of shapes to pick from, you roamed around corriders and you could shoot – you could also transport from level to level. It was the precursor to the company time waster that Doom was years later. Wolfenstein first came out o the mac – no doubtly built upon that original mac network game … and of course, Halo was actually created for the Mac until MS bought Bungie. And then the Iphone/itunes – bring gaming back to its roots. That for $99, you could topple EA in a weekend. AS IT SHOULD BE. Apple for most of its history – Apple II. Mac. Iphone/iTunes represented the belief that one guy with an idea could create something in his garage (LITERALLY) and bring his/her dream to life – and maybe even make some money. Something that Nintendo & Sony pretty much frown upon and MS says sure – if you sign up to be a WIN developer at thousands but certainly more than $99. So, it all depends on how deep you want to dig.

(You could also point out that all three consoles are running a version of the PowerPC chip that Apple created with IBM & Moto though of course, that was more SJ 1.0 legacy than SJ directly).

Then, “The 1,000 people surveyed are supposed to be avid fans and industry professionals, but they should all have their consoles and computers taken away after giving answers like these.”

Maybe, those 1000 people are showing a slight more humanity and empathy by being influenced by recent events?

There are some things that should not pass without comment, like a coach abusing a boy in the Penn State showers, but getting all worked up about a bunch of humans expressing their humanity in a survey is not one of them.

Then, “they hardly invented the cell phone game, and to say that ANY mobile game is more relevant to the industry than years of console and PC titles is absolute insanity.”

Where did the survey question ask who “invented” anything? And, the advent of mobile gaming has changed the landscape of gaming considerably. To deny that is just as much “absolute insanity”.

Perhaps you need to think of how they structured this survey:

“Incidentally, iPhone was voted as a top-five product by 53 per cent of survey participants.”

From that, it’s clear that they asked people not for the most influential, but their Top-5 most influential. That changes the nature of the survey considerably, but thru your rage you couldn’t see past the headlines.

“blasphemy, plain and simple”

Gaming is not a religion.

“treating him like some sort of god who invented anything”

Strawman argument warning! Where did the survey or its participants treat Steve like “some soft of god”, and where did the survey mention anything about “inventing anything”?

“offensive to those who actually made significant contributions”

Unless you are Newell or Miyamoto, how can you speak for them. They probably laughed at something you are having a fit over. Someone needs to cool their jets a little.

Keep in mind that The Two Steves and gaming go back to the nineteen-seventies. The Two Steves introduced color to arcade and console gaming at Atari with Breakout, and then did the same thing to PC gaming with Brickout. Before The Two Steves, the state of the art in console games was Pong.

Before the Macintosh, the Apple ][+ was the most popular PC gaming platform, so popular that Quadram sold a popular Apple emulation board for the IBM PC. Not only did Apple computers support everything from Zork to Castle Wolfenstein, Apple was THE champion of educational gaming. The Apple Computer had color graphics, a game controller port, and an available floppy disk drive – items that set the baseline for game capable computers.

The iPhone and iPad are just the culmination of a thirty-five year tradition.

This is preposterous, I have never read such ill informed crap in my life. Steve Jobs has absolutely ZERO influence on gaming, Mark Zuckerberg being on that list is just as insulting as a gamer. And before anyone tries to say “OH YA! WELL ANGRY BIRDS!” Reality Check, Steve Jobs didn’t make nor design Angry Birds, why isn’t the creator of Angry Birds on there? Where’s John Carmack the father of FPS? It’s insulting enough people call Steve Job’s the “Father of Modern Technology.” Father of Modern MARKETING maybe. Stop with this giant spread of misinformation, stop with the insane titles, he doesn’t belong on any of these lists, he invented very little and he innovated very little. Steve Job’s does not belong, nor deserve to be anywhere near “Top 10″ video gaming anything. He has zero influence on the industry, he has not innovated video games in anyway and it will and always will remain that way no matter how much of you cultists get butthurt over it.

The fact that the NES didn’t even make the list is another travesty. Considering the Video Game Crash in the early 80′s had almost, if not completely, driven home consoles out of existence, only the arrival of the original NES revitalized the industry. To say that Steve Jobs was a major influence on gaming is more than just laughable, it’s offensive.

Hello. I am currently employed as a professional in the software industry and I would like to inform you that Steve Jobs has never contributed a single thing to advancing computers. Ever. He was a terrible person and an excellent scam artist who has the entire world tricked into thinking he was amazing, but that couldn’t be any further from the truth.